Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Pens certainly have the Flyers number this year. Five games...five wins against Philly this year. The Pens have now won three straight games after losing the previous four.The Pens poured it on tonight while scoring more than Father Stanley at summer camp.

This game belonged to the Pens right from the beginning. We were discussing how much we liked Thorburn. Next thing you know, Ruutu brings it into the zone and feeds a drop-pass to Thorbie, and aided by a delicious screen by Jarrko, gets it past goalie Nittymaki to get the scoring off to a resounding start. 59 seconds later, The Sidney Crosby show began.

Sidney went down behind the net, came back out and just fed a backhand pass towards the goal. It ended up hitting of a Flyer's skate and in it went. 2-0 Pens. Yesss. This is going to be great. They're gonna blow them out and it's gon---Flyers score a fluke goal to make it 2-1.Less than four minutes after that Philly goal, they end up scoring another one on a shot from in the slot to tie the game. It was really devastating at the time.With about seven minutes left in the first, however, Sergei Gonchar (A: Crosby) scored a slap-shot powerplay goal after finally succumbing to the cascading shouts of "SHOOT" coming from Jurassic Park game warden Robert Muldoon in the F section.

"Shoot her! SHOOOOOOOT HER-R-R!"

The Pens went into the second period up 3-2 and never looked back. Six minutes into the second, Ryan the Magnificent finally got on the board (A: Crosby) this season with an Ouellet goal to make it 4-2. Not too long after, Crosby literally stole the puck from a Flyer in the neutral zone, swooped down into the zone, went behind the net and out the other side, and fed Gonchar in the slot. Gonchar wristed it past Nittymaki, and it was 5-2. That was it for Nittymaki. No, it wasn't. Yes, it was. No, it wasn't.Backup goalie Houle came in to spell Nittymaki. While he was in net, he decided to join the club and let a puck get past him. Mark Recchi jobbed in a rebound (A: Crosby) to jump the lead up to 6-2.Goalie Houle left, and Nittymaki came back in to close out the second period.

Maxime Talbot found time to play The Outfield's "Your Love" on air guitar in the third period.

If the third period was going to be interesting, the Flyers had to score early. And they did. On one of the best plays of the night, Kyle Calder took the puck from Umberger on a 2-on-1 and turned Fleury into a woman.This upset the Pens. A minute later, Michel Ouellet received a pass near the goal line and beat Nittymaki to make it 7-3 (A: Crosby) .Then two minutes after that, Mike Knuble scored for the Flyers to make it 7-4. After that Capitals game the other night, I didn't know what to think.We threw the New Jersey Devil clamp onto the neutral zone, though, and ran out the rest of the clock. Well, a nice 7-3 victory over the Flyers.

Oh, wait. Jordan Staal grabs the puck, embarrasses a Flyers defenseman, walks in, and beats Nittymaki with 7 seconds left to score (shorthanded again) the most meaningless goal in the NHL since Larry Murphy scored the eighth goal against Jon Casey in 1991.

Game.

Stats

Crosby: 1 G, 5 A (Sole possession of first place in points)

Gonchar: 2 G, 3 A

Malone: 1 G, 3 A

Malkin: A puzzling zero points and 1 shot on goal

Shots: PHI (29) PENS (23)

Powerplay: PHI ( 0 for 3 ) PENS ( 3 for 9 )

Miscellaneous

Is it disturbing to anyone else that the Flyers' best scoring chances came when they were shorthanded?

Philly's Todd Fedoruk was everywhere tonight. He was starting scrums between the periods, he was scoring goals, and he was rocking the bantam hockey cage.

great game I missed period one, first thing i saw was Fedoruk grab Talbot and go for the punch. I just said, "woah watching the rest." and of course we got a new penalty in the NHL now made up by Staggy and that is a 2 minute minor for stupidity...

That Calder goal was hard to swallow, I'm still not sure where Fleury was going on that one. That train wreck he was in later was pretty amazing, and I'm just happy that the Flyers didn't score while one of them was laying all over our goalie.

So glad to see Jordan get a goal,even if it was with about 2 seconds left. He's been too quiet lately.

I watched this game on TSN tonight through comcast.net (I go to school in VA, so I can't catch FSN Pittsburgh), and all the announcers talked about the entire gmae is how Croz is the best player in the league (except one dude kept saying Iginla over and over), and how he should win the Hart as well as the Art Ross this year. It's always refreshing to hear other announcers compliment Sid and the Pens so much, especially when it's not the crappy VS announcers. And by the way: they said the Pens WILL make the playoffs this year! (although one dude, probably the Iginla dude, kept saying they needed to add Brian Leetch to get over the hump)... and although it's only 30 games into the season and the announcers are not omniscient, that still got me pumped. GO PENS!

For those of you who TIVO'd the game, at 8:51 (o' clock) they show Crosby on the bench after they made the score 5-2, on a goal where the Flyers' Matt Ellison was out of position. Crosby clearly says, "I beat the fuck out of Ellison in Juniors."

I saw a post-game interview with Crosby on ESPNnews...man...what a head this kid has on his shoulders... All he could talk about after the game was how he loved how much heart the team had and it was important for the team to keep growing and learning; that playoffs would be a great bonus, but it's not a "must." We're incredibly lucky as Pens fans...

Yeah Croz apparently has a mouth that could make a truck driver blush. In the Capitals game I saw him say "Are you fucking blind?" to the ref, and then I hit instant replay on the TiVo to enjoy seeing him say it again.

Someone should keep track of this thing and see how his dropping the F-bomb correlates to his performance. I suspect it can only help.

Hey Sidney...saw Art Ross over the weekend...he said things are well...he's been seeing different parts of the country...but thing is, he told me he really misses Pittsburgh. You think you can help him out with that?

should i be a mark and stop by the mall @ robinson on the way home from work tonight (since I work 2 minutes from it) and act like a giddy school girl for the tv tapings? i could make up signs that say various things, such as:

- "Mark Eaton is my sugar daddy"- "Malone can Mal-own me"- "I <3 Steigy... j/k LOL"- "There may be 3 U's in RUUTU, but there are many more L's coming for PHILLLLLY"

And finally...

- "Why is the Evgeni Malkin Slide Puzzle in the Fan Center section of PittsburghPenguins.com so f'n hard?!?"

First off we should have put 10 on philly!!! I hate those basterds, they are slowly becomming the Cleveland of hockey to me.

Anyone else of the opionin that we need a goon, someone to protect Sid and Malkin? I mean we have one playing for pittsburgh too, I heard a rumor that Leroux was playing for the charity team this year!!! But seriously we need someone to kick someone like Fedoruk's butt. By the way nice helmet, are the Flyers that strapped for cash they are stealing little kids equipment?

bob grove said after the game on radio that fedoruk hit sid at the end of period 1, while sid was skating over to do an interview. he said "apparently the message hasnt made it to todd fedoruk in the flyers locker room that the last thing you wanna do is agitate sidney crosby"just imagine if he didnt miss 3 games with that injury......he could have a 10 point lead over jagr

I gotta get one thing off my chest though. One thing that bothers me about a couple of posts and Bob Errey's comments is that you are making fun of someone for wearing the proper equipment. I mean seriously, is it not time for face shields to be mandatory? One 105Mph puck to the temple or eye and that’s it. It’s going to happen eventually. When it does, the same hard guys that make fun of someone for wearing a face shield are going to act like a big some tragedy. Plan and simple, if you are at least not wearing a visor you’re an idiot and get what you deserve. I mean if I owned a team and I was investing 4 million a year in a player I would want them wearing a shield so they don't miss 4 weeks down the end of the season stretch do to a totally avoidable injury. Fedoruk is the smartest guy on the ice!

He was actually wearing it b/c he had reconstructive face surgery from fighting too much. And for as much of an ass he is it shows the true charecter and passion that hockey players show above all other sport athletes. Hockey players will play w/ fractured jaws, sprains, broken bones etc. Other pros will sit out just for way less and get paid much more for it. i mean come on...turf toe?

I think one of the reasons Errey was getting on Fedoruk so much is that he was taking advantage of the fact that he is wearing the mask. Because the mask is on because of an injury...if someone were to knock it off in a fight, there would be a fine and possibly a suspension. Fedoruk knew this and was using it to his advantage by agitating and cheap shotting the whole game.

That seems like why to me.

Also, no way in the forseeable future are full cages made mandatory. They aren't even making visors mandatory yet.

1st: love the blog.2d: did anyone else hear the "MVP" chants for Sid at game's end last night? badass.3d: everything to be said about the game has already been said better than i can, so i'll get random -- was anyone else at the game? how cool was the "24"-style jumbotron opening? if anyone out there knows of ANYWHERE to download it, please help me out.

My favorite part from the game last night was that the Pens "snowmanned" the Flyers. Since no one else has mentioned it, it seems as if it is just something my old hockey buddies were in to. In other words, scoring 8 on an opponent was the ultimate in humiliation and caused great celebration in that we gave them a snowman, or an 8.